TK Saccoh
Meet TK. She is a poet who spills her heart out on the stage of different platforms throughout the city of Philadelphia. Her words tell the stories of African American women, about their lives, their struggles and their beauty. She is a Black Lives Matter Activist, always calling out things as she sees them with honesty and grace. But she also has a great sense of humor which never fails to shine. It’s never easy to love who you are, but TK has mastered the first step; acceptance.
Right Now
Right now, I love my skin color. I feel like it's unique. Previously, I felt like society taught me to dislike it and to prefer fairer skin. I was pushed to like people with white skin because it was synonymous with beauty and all that’s good while black was ugly. It took me such a long time to love my skin. Now, I know better. I have grown and developed as a person. I’m proud of that but I will always wonder why I couldn’t have loved myself earlier.
Seattle
I went through elementary school in Seattle. My neighborhood was very white. I went to school with kids with white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. I thought that was the standard of beauty. I even tried to straighten my hair so I could blend in a little bit, but I knew I couldn’t fit into that narrative. It really had a toll on my self esteem because I couldn’t see how I fit in their lives. I couldn’t related to a lot of people. I think there is where I learned to hate my skin.
Society
Society doesn’t clearly tell you to hate your skin, but some things they do that are subtle that send the same message. The lack of representation is one of them. On tv, there is little to no people of color. There’s barely any Asian, brown, black people. It just taught me that all the girls who “got the boys” were light skinned, even if they were black. This can manifest into hate. It felt like I wasn’t even worthy enough to be represented.
Second Grade
In second grade, I was going into my classroom from the playground. A classmate was holding the door for everyone but when I tried going through she shut the door. Later, when I asked her why, she said she didn’t hold the door for black people. That’s just one situation. We had twin day at our school and I tried to coordinate something with my friends, but they said they weren’t sure if I could because my “skin color wouldn’t match”.
Bleaching
My grandmother and other people in my family are very big on bleaching. They have all of these bleaching creams that keep their “skin fair”. It’s a mess. A lot of times my grandma has told me that I’m getting too dark. But I’ve always been black? I don’t know what to tell you. It’s crazy to think. If you’re African and a lot of Africans are dark skinned, why are you surprised that someone is getting darker in the summer? Experiences like have definitely affected me. But on the other hand, I’m grateful for my mother because she’s not like that. She’s never used a bleaching cream in her life. She has never taught me how to hate my skin. I do feel like it’s a pressure put more on women. There is a whole handsome and dark man narrative. There isn’t a beautiful and dark woman narrative out there.
The Nature of Bleaching
I think the pressure to bleach stems from white supremacy culture. White people own most of the power in the world. They can create the narrative and set the standards. If you struggle to live up to the standards, it can cause you to feel insecure. Then, businesses can be made out of your insecurities. The bleaching business is very lucrative and does just that. They are directly profiting off of the hate. First, they teach you how to hate yourself. Then, they give you a product to make you feel better. No one should have that hate in the first place.
Baby Steps
Literature. Slam poetry. Black appreciation. Black girl and boy magic. Writing poems about self love. Knowing my worth.
Beauty
Beauty to me is just being nice to people. It’s being able to appreciate people. Being able to sympathize and empathize with others while also connecting with them and their stories is beautiful. It's about sharing experiences. Color of one’s skin has nothing to do with beauty. People have been conditioned to think a certain way and I truly pity that.
Dear Little TK
I wish I could’ve told my younger self to just not listen to what society thinks. If someone thinks I’m not beautiful, that's not my problem.That's their personal problem. It shouldn’t hurt me and from now I won’t let it.
